Commitments Quotes

Kennedy said that he was quoting Dante. However, he or his speechwriter, got the quote wrong. In the Devine Comedy, Dante had a hot place in hell for the neutral, but the hottest place was reserved for traitors. Many people since then use this quote and attribute incorrectly to Dante because Kennedy’s version is the only one with which they have come in contact.

Menander first originated the phrase. However, Julius Caesar made it famous, by stating it when he crossed the Rubicon River with his Legions and headed for Rome. He had passed the “point of no return.” It was forbidden for a Roman commander of legions to allow the legions under arms to come that close to Rome under the theory that no military commander could take over the government if his legions were at a distance from Rome. Caesar was indeed marching on Rome with his troops, and took over the government. The great phrase implied that the key action had been taken and the commitment made. The dice was thrown but no one know yet what the results would be. For Caesar, they turned out to be good. Dice was a very good metaphor for the era as Greek and Roman men played (and gambled) on dice games frequently. John Adams used a variant of the quotation in castigating President Taylor. See {622034}

Nixon staff assistant Chuck Coulson used a variant of this quotation. See {628753}.

At the time military drumheads were made of the hide of animals. As the idea is gross to most of us today, it was to his Bohemian compatriots. The metaphor of using his remains to help even in such a simple and lowly way was dramatic patriotism in those days as it would be today.

At the time veterans would have to wait for up to a year till they could get their records and their benefits from the Veterans Administration which had insufficient budget while the Defense Department had as much money as the Military-Industrial complex could lobby for.

With a professionalized all volunteer military, most of whom came from just a few socio-economic strata of our society, wars at the time were fought and the risks and burdens borne by a small part of American society. The rest of society, unlike the Second World War did not experience any change in their style or standard of living.

This is one of the great statements in all political history. The nation was in a mess from the Great Depression, few had any hope, and Roosevelt had replaced a President who maintained that the Federal government could not do much about these business cycles. Roosevelt did not have all the answers and of the ones he had, he was not sure they would all be effective. So in two short sentences he conveyed the fact that he will try different things, not all necessarily successful, but a steely determination and commitment to get the job done. And that is just what happened.

His audience did not quite know exactly what the phrase meant, but it was so clear that he was committed to his audience that it helped him gain the Democratic Presidential Nomination.

On military or foreign policy matters his view was that presidents ought not to rule anything in or out so that he/she can keep all the options open and not reduce future flexibility.